Hi all,
We are having my son tested on the 9th (he's currently 6 and in a half-day K program). We live in NH and there is no gifted ed. The psych has already suggested that I think about the possibility of needing to home school, either next year or in the near future. I have been reading everything I can to try to prepare. {snipped}
I will need to have a portfolio of student work and have it reviewed by a teacher, and it's also recommended that we record what the child has read. How do people unschool and follow these guidelines? Thanks for reading!
As others have pointed out, what you do for compliance is different from what you SHOULD (and perhaps "must") do for documentation that will open doors for your child in the future. I recommend
over-documenting-- and using a portfolio is a good start. The other thing that you should probably keep an eye on is thinking about forms of documentation that gatekeepers of out-of-level (meaning chronological level) will find acceptable proof that your child should be given access to them.
Consider this:
what will it take to get a college to want to talk to a 13yo unschooler who is ready and eager to tackle undergraduate level material?In the more immediate future, this will apply to things like summer workshops, book clubs, classes, etc.
We have found that it is best if we have a mixture of documentation-- some things that would go into a portfolio, yes, but also things that there is simply no WAY for a parent to have done on the child's behalf-- videos of the child, juried experiences, contests, or the personal observations of someone other than family.
If you can get just ONE person (librarian, camp counselor, etc.) to offer the stamp of approval for this child to be accelerated, then you can access those things more readily.
Just know this-- people who work with kids have a sense that parents exaggerate (and that some will out and out lie about) their homeschooled kids' level of proficiency and accomplishments. I have no idea
why they think that, but they do.
That just means that you should probably bear it in mind as you choose ways to document your child's learning activities. The ages between 6 and 12 were very difficult this way, as our DD needed opportunities which were often +2-5 years past her chronological age, and we often found ourselves bargaining for entry to activities that the age cut-off had her 1-3 years "too young" for. We often had to do two things in light of that: 1. graciously grant permission for the person in charge to eject our daughter if it "didn't go well" (if she were under some age cutoff-- never happened, btw), and 2. allow them to meet our DD before deciding.
